About the AuthorGregg Keizer

Just weeks before it releases the next upgrade to Windows 10, Microsoft is trumpeting last spring’s version, claiming that the latter is “the most performant and reliable” ever.The drum beating for Windows 10 Creators Update, aka 1703 in Microsoft’s…

Apple upgraded the macOS Safari browser to version 11 this week, adding a feature that has drawn the ire of the online advertising industry.Safari 11 can be downloaded to Macs running 2016’s Sierra or 2015’s El Capitan from the Mac App Store. Users …

Google will strangle most auto-playing audio in early 2018 when it issues Chrome 64, the upgrade expected to ship Jan. 21-27, the search giant promised last week.”Chrome will be making auto-play more consistent with user expectations and will give u…

Google has finalized a schedule that, over the next 12 months, will send companies scrambling to replace the digital certificates that secure their websites or risk being viewed with suspicion by users running Chrome, the world’s most popular browse…

Apple has released a golden master candidate for macOS High Sierra, the desktop operating system slated to debut Sept. 25. The first public preview of the upcoming OS arrived June 29.A summertime beta program let anyone with a Mac — including worke…

Apple on Tuesday quietly announced it will release High Sierra, this year’s upgrade of the Mac’s operating system software, on Monday, Sept. 25.As has been Apple’s habit for several years, the date was posted on the company’s website. The news did n…

Apple today said that it will release iOS 11, the latest operating system for its iPhone and iPad line-ups, on Sept. 19, or a week from now.If the Cupertino, Calif. company follows tradition, it will issue the upgrade at approximately 10 a.m. PT, or…

Microsoft has launched a project designed to tempt customers into paying for the Windows 10 services aimed at enterprises.Dubbed “Windows Insider Lab for Enterprise” – or WILE from here on out – the invitation-only program allows users, most of whom…

Google on Wednesday released Chrome 61 for Windows, macOS and Linux, adding several new behind-the-scenes features — including one that lets web apps access USB peripherals — and patching 22 security vulnerabilities.Chrome updates in the backgroun…

Windows 7 again retained its majority user share in August, setting the stage for a potentially chaotic migration to its successor, Windows 10, over the next 28 months.According to analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 7’s user share in August …

Drip. Drip. Drip.That was the sound Microsoft’s browsers made last month as they leaked user share. Yet again.According to U.S. analytics vendor Net Applications, the user share of Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge — an estimate of the world’s person…

Microsoft’s next feature upgrade to Windows 10 will be released Oct. 17, weeks later than the company had earlier pegged as the delivery schedule.”The next update of Windows 10, the Fall Creators Update, will be available worldwide October 17,” said…

Old-school PCs may be déclassé, relegated by pronouncements of technology Trotskyites to the dustbin of history because smartphones and tablets and wearables and who knows what else, have or will soon take their place.

Not in corporations, they won’t.

PCs still lord it there, said Spiceworks, an online community and resource for IT professionals and the vendors trying to reach them.

“It turns out desktops still rule in the workplace … and it’s not even close,” wrote Peter Tsai, a senior technology analyst. According to a Spiceworks survey conducted in July, 60% of the employees in organizations represented by 998 IT professionals in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. relied on a desktop PC as their primary computing device.

Microsoft has warned users of Office for Mac 2011 not to upgrade to Apple’s macOS High Sierra when the new operating system launches next month.”Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Lync have not been tested on macOS 10.13 High Sierra, and no formal…

Microsoft will release the first upgrade to Windows Server 2016 the last week of September.”We’ll be launching Windows Server, version 1709, at Ignite,” Jeff Woolsey, a manager in Microsoft’s Windows Server group, wrote on a company blog on Thursday…

Google this week added features and functionality to a $50 subscription plan, renamed Chrome Enterprise, to position its lightweight Chrome OS as credible competition for rival Microsoft and Windows in the workplace.Chrome Enterprise adds several ne…

Google this week added features and functionality to a $50 subscription plan, renamed Chrome Enterprise, to position its lightweight Chrome OS as credible competition for rival Microsoft and Windows in the workplace.Chrome Enterprise adds several ne…

The builders of the Brave browser are trying to put a price on online users’ attention with blockchain-based tokens that will be traded between publishers, advertisers and those willing to view ads.The project, dubbed “Basic Attention Token” (BAT), …

Mozilla now automatically delivers the 64-bit version of Firefox to Windows users with compatible hardware, the open-source developer said this week. (Firefox can be downloaded here.)”Users on 64-bit Windows who download Firefox will now get our 64-…

Microsoft last week added another edition to its Windows 10 portfolio, introducing a variant of Windows 10 Pro aimed at high-end desktops, often tagged as workstations.”Windows 10 Pro [for Workstations is] designed to meet the needs of our advanced …

Microsoft has backed off a possible confrontation with customers who had been told their two-to-four-year-old PCs were unfit for Windows 10, a sign, said one analyst, that the company remains unsure of its support strategy for the OS.Earlier this ye…

IT professionals can now use Intune, Microsoft’s cloud-based enterprise mobility management service, to remotely install Office applications onto company devices running Windows 10 version 1703 or later.The functionality was added to Intune in June,…

Microsoft has added rapid reaction to a year-old subscription service that will automatically shut down accounts – logging a user out of all managed apps and services, including those delivered by a third-party – at the first hint of suspicious acti…

Mozilla today released Firefox 55 for Windows, macOS and Linux, debuting options to tweak the browser’s performance settings, adding support for the WebVR virtual reality standard and taking a major first step toward dispatching Flash to the Great S…

Apple last week reported a 15% uptick in iPad sales, the tablet’s first sign of growth in more than four years.But credit for the prosperity should probably go to Apple’s lower-priced iPad, said one analyst – not to the company’s campaign to convinc…

Google has added a built-in ad blocker to the roughest version of Chrome, signaling that it will assume responsibility for barring some online ads in the polished product as early as October.The ad blocker appeared in some users’ copies of the “Cana…

“Stubborn” must be Windows 7’s middle name.The enterprise-standard operating system held onto its majority market share in July, according to analytics vendor Net Applications, again signaling that it will not go gentle into that good night of the r…

Microsoft has to take solace from any source it can as its share of the browser market continues to dribble down the drain.To wit: Even as Microsoft’s browser share again declined during July, at least it was a smaller contraction than of late, perh…

Last week, Adobe announced it would dig a deep hole for its Flash Player, drop in the plug-in, and cover it with dirt by the end of 2020. So will end a technology that, in many ways, made the Web — even as users, security experts and browser makers took turns whacking it like a piñata at a six-year-old’s birthday party.

“We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020,” Adobe said in a post to its primary blog. The long lead time, the company contended, will give content makers time to complete the transition to Web standards, like HTML5 and WebGL.

Microsoft today said its latest Windows 10 upgrade, the “Creators Update,” is suitable for broad deployment by businesses, marking an important milestone for the edition and simultaneously setting its retirement in 14 months.The move also begins a c…